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60 free Koala trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This koala trivia quiz covers everything from the obvious (they are marsupials, not bears) to the genuinely weird: why the koala's brain floats in cerebrospinal fluid, why joeys eat their mother's 'pap', how a two-metre caecum lets it live on toxic eucalyptus, and why male koalas make a noise like a snoring, belching motorbike. You will also meet the koala in human history and culture: the 'New Holland Sloth' of 1810, the fur trade that killed millions in the 1920s, Blinky Bill, the drop bear hoax, Sam the koala from the Black Saturday fires, and the 'koala diplomacy' of the 2014 G20 summit. Conservation questions cover the 2022 endangered listing, chlamydia and the koala retrovirus. Every question was checked against a primary reference (mainly the Wikipedia articles on the koala and related subjects) and carries a citation, so it is safe to use for a classroom or pub quiz. Difficulty ranges from questions an eight-year-old will get to a few that will stump a zookeeper.
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Q 01What kind of animal is a koala?
A marsupial
'Koala bear' is a misnomer: it is a pouched mammal whose closest living relatives are wombats.
Q 02Which animals are the koala's closest living relatives?
Wombats
Both belong to the suborder Vombatiformes; kangaroos and possums are in a sister group.
Q 03Roughly how many hours a day does a koala sleep?
20
The eucalyptus diet is so poor in energy that sleeping is the only way to balance the books.
Q 04The word 'koala' comes from the Dharug word 'gula', meaning what?
No water
Koalas rarely need to drink because they get most of their moisture from leaves.
Q 05The koala's genus name Phascolarctos combines the Greek words for 'pouch' and what?
Bear
So even the scientists called it a pouched bear; the species name cinereus is Latin for 'ash-coloured'.
Q 06What is the koala's species name, Latin for 'ash-coloured'?
cinereus
The full binomial is Phascolarctos cinereus, formally fixed after a naming tangle in the 1810s.
Q 07In which four Australian states are wild koalas found?
Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia
They are not native to South Australia at all; koalas were shipped there from French Island in Victoria around 1920.
Q 08How much heavier are koalas from Victoria than koalas from Queensland?
Twice as heavy
Southern koalas are bigger, shaggier and browner; northern ones are smaller and silver-grey.
Q 09Compared with a typical diprotodont, the koala's brain is about how much smaller?
60%
It weighs about 19 g, does not fill the skull and floats in cerebrospinal fluid, which may cushion it in a fall.
Q 10What will a koala refuse to eat if it is placed on a flat surface?
Plucked eucalyptus leaves
Its small brain limits complex behaviour: food that does not match its normal routine of pulling leaves off branches simply does not register as food.
Q 11How many opposable digits does a koala have on each front paw?
Two
The first and second digits oppose the other three, giving it a double-thumbed grip on small branches.
Q 12The koala's eyes are unusual among marsupials because their pupils are what shape?
Vertical slits
It is thought to be an adaptation to living on a vertical plane, up trees.
Q 13Roughly how long is a koala's caecum, the fermenting chamber that lets it digest eucalyptus?
200 cm
It is possibly the largest caecum for any animal of the koala's size, and food can sit in the gut for 100 hours.
Q 21How is the male koala's bellow described?
Deep snoring inhalations and belching exhalations
Its low frequency travels far through the forest, and females pay more attention to bellows from larger males.
Q 22What unusual structure lets koalas produce sounds far deeper than an animal their size should manage?
Extra vocal cords in the soft palate
The larynx also sits unusually low in the vocal tract and can be pulled down even further.
Q 23How long is a koala's gestation?
33 to 35 days
Q 14Which liver enzyme family lets koalas neutralise the poisons in eucalyptus leaves?
Cytochrome P450
The toxins are phenolic compounds and terpenes that deter almost every other mammal from eating the leaves.
Q 15The koala's metabolic rate is roughly what fraction of a typical mammal's?
50%
That low rate is why it can survive on a diet with so few calories.
Q 16Of the 600-plus eucalyptus species available, koalas show a strong preference for roughly how many?
30
Three species alone, including the forest red gum, make up more than 20% of their diet on average.
Q 17Roughly how much leaf does a koala eat each day?
Up to 400 grams
That is spread over four to six feeding sessions, mostly at night.
Q 18Research found koalas spend less than what share of their day on the ground?
1%
They descend only two or three times a night, for a total of about ten minutes, usually to move to another tree.
Q 19How much time does a koala spend on social behaviour each day?
About 15 minutes
They are asocial: only mothers form bonds, and only with their dependent joeys.
Q 20Male koalas mark their trees using scent glands located where on their bodies?
On the chest
The gland shows as a bald patch, and its secretions contain about 40 different compounds.
The newborn joey weighs no more than half a gram and must crawl into the pouch to finish developing.
Q 24Newborn koala joeys weigh no more than how much?
0.5 grams
Despite that, they can already breathe, defecate and urinate, and their forelimbs are developed enough to climb.
Q 25What is unusual about the female koala's pouch compared with other marsupials?
She does not clean it
The pouch opening is held shut by a sphincter muscle to keep the joey from falling out.
Q 26Roughly how long does a joey live in its mother's pouch before fully emerging?
Six to seven months
It then rides on her back, learning to climb, and is not fully weaned until about a year old.
Q 27What does a mother koala feed her joey to prepare its gut for eucalyptus?
A runny faecal 'pap' from her cloaca
The pap comes from her caecum, is runnier than normal droppings and seeds the joey's gut with the microbes it will need.
Q 28Unlike other marsupials, how does koala milk change as the joey grows?
It becomes less fatty
The mother lactates for as long as a year to compensate for her own low energy production.
Q 29How long do koalas typically live in the wild?
13 to 18 years
Many die of starvation once their molars wear flat around age six onward and they can no longer grind leaves.
Q 30Which bacterial disease is epidemic among mainland koalas, causing eye and reproductive-tract infections?
Chlamydia
Some island populations are free of it, and vaccination trials were under way as of 2024.